to sell one's body
- phrasal verb
- NSFW
:
prostituirse
- There are serious risks involved when someone chooses to sell their body for money.
Examples
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I'm talking about women selling their bodies because they no longer have any other choice.
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I could quit using, you could quit selling your body.
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You want me to go sell my body on the street?
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It's illegal to sell your body, right?
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Guess I'll have to sell my body.
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You wound up selling your body for bus fare.
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I didn't like it, but I guess it was a better way to support her habit than selling her body on the street.
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There's nothing romantic about selling your body for a pastry.
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I want some gal who's driven to sell her body because she's hungry.
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Many people feel pressured to sell their bodies when they are in difficult financial situations.
Synonyms
11
4.6
To have sex with someone for money
4
9.8
To have sex with people for money
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly inferable from the constituents: 'sell' (transfer for payment) + 'one's body' (one's physical person) yields the idea of exchanging one's body for money. This phrasing is cross‑linguistically common (e.g. French 'vendre son corps', Spanish 'vender su cuerpo') and thus a B1 learner who knows the words will readily derive the sense of prostitution/sex work.
Etymology
Sell one's body comes from the literal idea of treating a person's body like an object you can sell for money. That's why it means 'to do sexual work for money'.